Terra
by Beloved-Stranger
Summary: "You said, before, that I had entered Terran space…?" Scoresby responded a little cautiously. "I did." "Then the planet…that's Terra." "It is, but mostly we just call it –" "Earth," she breathed. "I-I've found Earth…" AU from Maelstrom onwards. Obviously
1. Terra

**Disclaimer:** I don't own any of it. Sad. So sad. It's a sad, sad situation…

**Author's Note: ** I seem incapable of leaving well enough alone. Damnit.

* * *

**Terra**

_"__Lee... I'll see you on the other side."_

_"Kara, please, listen to me! Come back."  
_

_"__Just let me go."_

_"__Godsdamn it, Kara! You come back! Come back!"  
_

_"__It's okay. Just let me go. They're waiting for me…"_

She felt the explosion.

The roar went right through her, like a wind cutting through open-weave cotton. It shook her bones and drew a gasp from her as she was jolted from the peace that had cocooned her.

Gasping for breath, eyes wide open now, she turned in her seat, frantically taking in her surroundings.

She was unharmed.

The Viper was whole.

And around her there was no whirling cloud of deadly gas, only unfamiliar stars and…

_Oh, gods…_

It was a planet.

Blue and green alternately hidden and revealed by slow swirling white cloud. Oceans glittered at her, winking in the light of a yellow sun. Almost level with her on the planet's crown was a small white moon orbiting. At this distance she could see the continents' patterns of ochre and green, the white masses at the poles, a scattering of islands in one of the oceans like flung scraps of velvet…

"Unidentified fighter, unidentified fighter."

The wireless snarled to life. Kara reared back so hard out of shear surprise she came dangerously close to concussing herself on the back of her seat. She stared at the dash, stunned.

"This is Scoreboard-Five. Be warned, you have entered into Terran space uncleared and uninvited. Please hold position, identify yourself and state the reason for your presence," the voice continued. It was male, average timbre and sounded just rough enough to be middle-aged, she guessed.

A shadow fell over her, and she looked up.

Rising into view was a ship.

She'd never seen anything like it.

The thing was easily twice the size of a Raptor, but that was where any resemblance to any other ship ended. It was like a great, legless scorpion, she thought. The tapered stern curved first down, as though the scorpion's body were curling, then up, thinning to a barbed point that hung over the 'shoulder'.

Even more terrifying (and by now she really was working up to terrified) were the abso-frakking-lutely huge pincers held out in front of the ship. They were parting, ponderously slow, and between them she could actually _see_ an electrical current, jumping back and forward in fizzing lines of jagged violet.

Then the pincers lowered a little, and she saw past them to the place where a real scorpion would have had its eyes.

Instead there was a dash window, and through it she could see two faces.

Human faces.

Looking back at her.

"Unidentified fighter, unidentified fighter. I say again, identify yourself and state your reason –"

Kara rediscovered her voice rather unexpectedly.

"Scoreboard-Five, this is Starbuck. I…I'm lost."

She saw the two people in the other ship – the Scoreboard – turn and look at each other before turning what she imagined to be quizzical gazes back on her.

"Say again, Starbuck."

"I'm lost," she admitted. "I was in a storm over a gas giant. I flew down too far…I thought my ship had blown up, but then I was here…"

She saw another look exchanged and heard a mutter of something that sounded like, "fucking hell…" whatever that meant.

"Starbuck, you're speaking with Captain Baylor Scoresby. That wasn't a storm you flew into – well, it was – but it was also a Carver's Gate. A wrinkle in space-time, kinda like a safer version of a wormhole or a black hole. Do you follow?"

_Holy frak._

"Uh, yeah…"

"That particular one spits out just here, which is why _we're_ here," Scoresby said.

"Guarding the planet?"

"Give the gal a prize."

Something raced across her brain like lightning; a flash of thought so physical it was like a blow.

"You said, before, that I had entered Terran space…?"

Scoresby responded a little cautiously. "I did."

"Then the planet…that's Terra."

"It is, but mostly we just call it –"

"Earth," she breathed. "I-I've found Earth…"

* * *

**AN:** 'Terra' is of course the Latin name for our planet. Since Latin is also found in various places throughout BSG, it follows that Kara, deeply interested in the old legend, would know both the current and ancient name for it.


	2. Welcome Wagon

**AN: **Loves to those who reviewed. In this chapter (which, as requested, will be longer) Kara gets a ride, makes a friend and meets someone unexpected.

* * *

**Welcome Wagon**

Kara lent her head against one side of the canopy and gazed downwards at the planet.

Earth turned lazily below, whole and beautiful, and mercifully nuclear-holocaust-free. She played a quiet internal game of counting how many islands she could see as the clouds swirled about over one of the southern oceans. One of the Viper's engines was misfiring, so Scoreboard-Five was towing her to the nearest space station, the _Pacific Star_, instead of attempting onsite repairs on unfamiliar technology.

There had been a Battlestar called the _Pacifica_, she remembered, one of the first to go down, no doubt, from its defensive orbit over Canceron.

_I need a drink._

"Almost there, Starbuck," Esther said through the wireless. She was Scoresby's 2IC, and from what Kara could see of her through the Scoreboard's front window was as young and blonde as Kara herself. "The _Star_ has a university chapter onboard, so there'll be a whole passel of tech-heads to put your bird back together."

"University chapter?" she asked, curious. "Like, military academy students?"

"Some," Esther said, "Although the majority will be part of the Research and Development teams that lurk about up here."

Something about the way she said it made Kara ask, "I'm not the first to come through the Caver's Gate huh?"

"Not by a long shot, though you're the first to come through that particular Gate. You rampaging lunatic," she added.

"Hey!" Kara defended.

Esther chortled, her laugh crackling down the Viper's ancient wireless connection. "Come on, admit it, you've gotta be one heck of a rough rider to faceplant a Jovian storm."

"Last time I ever tell you anything," Kara griped. "Hey, what're those islands down there?"

"The Pacific Islands. In the South Pacific Ocean."

"Over which orbits the _Pacific Star_ space station. Wow, you guys have a real talent for naming shit, you know that?"

"You can't see me right now, but I'm glaring."

This time Kara was the one cackling. She stopped when the space station came into view.

_Oh. Wow._

It had been a long time since Kara had seen anything like this. The closest was the Scorpion Fleet Shipyard, and the last time she'd seen that was six years ago when she was still teaching flight school.

The _Pacific Star _was, funnily enough, star-shaped; a heptagram, in fact, with seven long spars spearing out from the core. At the end of each spar was a single port obviously meant for larger ships; two of them were occupied by veritable beasts with dark, gleaming hulls carapaced the same way the Scoreboard was. They looked more like giant wasps than scorpions; some evil mutant species, with a line of sloped spines running along their topsides from bow to stern and their names written in poison green or deadly yellow down their thoraxes. Terran lettering seemed to be close Colonial, because Kara could make out _Behemoth_ on the closer of the two brutish ships. She smirked, wondering if it meant the same in Terran as it did in Colonial; 'monster'.

Along both sides of each spar were smaller ports for cargo ships. There were a few of these tooling about, and from what she could see were similar to the clunky collection of boxes scattered throughout the Fleet. Closer to the core of the _Star_, in the dips between spars were touchdown areas that could be sealed and pressurized for ships like the Scoreboard or, if there had been any there, Raptors and other shuttles. Fighters too, she guessed though she couldn't see any about. Her Viper was the only thing that looked remotely capable of a dogfight in space or atmosphere. The Scoreboard was menacing, but, Esther had explained, a guardian and retrieval ship more than anything (Kara, however, suspected she was playing it down. Scoreboard-Five looked plenty capable of inflicting some serious damage if she chose.)

"We're making our approach now, Kara," Esther told her. "Sit tight and we'll see you on the deck."

"Yeah, thanks, Est."

The wireless clicked out and Kara watched as the Scoreboard began angling as she got closer to one of the inner ports, following the guide-lights around its mouth and the landing pad inside. Esther and Scoresby brought her down neatly, hardly jarring Kara and her Viper as they did so. She felt the thud of the port doors closing behind them and her fighter settling as the port itself was pressurized, air pumped in and gravity restored.

The wireless came back and Esther told her, "Well, that went well."

"Yeah, nice come down."

"Why thank you," came Scoresby's voice, dryly. "Here comes the deck crew now. We'll see you in a second, Captain Thrace."

Kara watched as a group of people in yellow jumpsuits, unnervingly similar to the deck crew on _Galactica_ swarmed over the port floor to both ships. Descent ladders were placed, Kara's canopy finagled open and a woman with laugh lines and curly hair offered her a hand up.

"Welcome to the Pacific Star," she said with a grin.

Kara found herself smiling back and taking her hand.

"Thanks. It's fantastic to be here."

---

"Okay."

Baylor sat back in his seat, taking a breath. It had been quite the morning.

Wasn't every day a Colonial popped out of a Carver's Gate and nearly sat her ship right on top of you.

He turned to his 2IC. "LT."

Lieutenant Esther O'Callahan looked enquiringly back at him. "Yeah, Cap?"

"Brass'll be meeting us at the door, the UC rep in the room. I want you to stick with Starbuck through the debrief, keep her calm and explain stuff to her as need be. And don't let the UC rep overwhelm her."

Est raised her eyebrows. She looked just like her old man when she did that. "Why? Who's the UC rep?"

He grinned. "You can't guess?"

Realization dawned. "Ah, crap. Tattie?"

Baylor chuckled. "Little sister will be pleased to see you, I'll bet."

Est smirked and continued doing her last minute checks. "Not as pleased as she'll be when she meets Kara." She paused, turning to her CO. "Another Colonial, can you believe it? Our first fighter too."

He nodded. "Both your folks'll be out of their trees over this. I wonder if she's one of the sensitives…"

Est nodded thoughtfully. "Or, God, could you imagine it, one of Dad's primaries. He'd about die. Checks complete," she added.

Baylor sighed and got to his feet. "Good. Let's get going. Can't leave our girl at the mercy of Tattie, can we?"

His 2IC snickered. "No sir."

---

Kara couldn't help feeling like someone had stuck her in a parallel universe and made Esther O'Callahan to be her mirror image.

Est was tall and blond, hair cropped at her jaw and sitting in a bright halo about her face. When she smiled it was the same brand of shit-eating grin Kara remembered seeing in a mirror a few times. She was wearing a flight suit too, though of course it differed from Kara's – matte blue instead of metallic green, the armour at shin and elbows, torso and shoulders in shining, almost lacquered black. There were unfamiliar badges on her upper arms, one of them bearing a black scorpion and a blue five.

She grinned at Kara as she leapt down the last few steps of the descent ladder ahead of the guy who had to be Scoresby; he had the dry, world-weary look to him that went with the voice. Black and iron-grey hair cut short, angular face and the kind of hooded eyes that killed ladies left right and centre.

"Nice to see you in the flesh," Est said, interrupting Kara's brief perusal of her CO.

Then she stood to, smirked, and saluted.

Kara smirked back and returned the salute.

Scoresby stood at the base of the land and said, "Ye gods, now there's two of them."

Just for good measure, Kara saluted to him too. Scoresby returned it, then shook her hand.

"Alright," he said, "we'd better get going." He met her gaze solidly, those eyes very deep and very hazel. "We've got a debrief to get to. Captain Thrace, you're gonna want to stick with Est here."

"I am?"

Est nodded. "You are. Seriously."

Kara felt her hackles go up in warning. A little voice at the back of her brain that sounded suspiciously like the Admiral's said, _play it cool, Starbuck. You're in a new territory now; theirs. Play it cool…_

"Okay." She nodded to Est. "Let's go get debriefed."

With one last look over her shoulder at the Viper, she turned and followed Scoresby from the port deck.

---

The corridors of the _Pacific Star _were square.

It bothered her, for some reason, until she realized she was comparing them to the often diamond shaped passages of the _Galactica_. She had just relaxed when a contingent of armed men, presumably Earth's version of Marines, fell in step with them at the door.

Kara tensed. Est shot her a sidelong look and laid a gentle hand on her arm.

"Just a precaution," she murmured. "We've been surprised before."

Kara frowned. "'Surprised'?"

Est gazed solemnly back at her, all joking gone. "Remember how I said you weren't the first to come through a Carver's Gate?" she said lowly.

Kara's eyes narrowed. A nasty suspicion was forming at the back of her mind. An illogical one, but a stubborn one too. Est walked close to her as they moved down the foreign corridor. Kara tried to focus on her and momentarily ignore the grunts surrounding them.

"You're the first one to come through that Gate, yeah, but we've had others pop out of Gates further from the planet, over by Mars and the asteroid belt."

"Uh, Mars?"

"Neighbouring planet."

"Occupied?"

"Long dead." Est face twisted sardonically. "Kinda like the Carver's Gates, we thought anyway. Nothing had come through for thousands of years…Then two and half years ago, one of them spits out a bunch of ships…"

"LT," Scoresby murmured.

Both women looked up. The corridor ended here. There was a set of double glass door leading to what looked like an open courtyard. The grunts at the front swung them open and held them while the rest of the party passed through.

It _was_ an open courtyard; looking up Kara saw the place was roofed with great panes of blast-proof glass, showing those alien stars wheeling slowly overhead. It made her think of the observation deck on _Galactica_, only _Galactica_ had never been decorated with glass and timber birds, each one hung from the steel framing with fine wire, their pale shapes making reverse silhouettes against the blackness of space beyond.

Looking down again, she saw that the courtyard was paved, like some of the old arcades in Delphi where she'd gotten into scraps as a kid. There were planter boxes set up in a seven sided pattern as well as several smaller pots with young trees in them. Their contents left what might have been stale, recycled air filled with new oxygen and the rich, organic scent of growing things. Kara could smell the soil, the _greenness_ of the leaves…

At the centre was a glass and steel cylinder. She could just make out pattern cut into its side and brought forward with subtle staining; whorls and spirals, curves and switchbacks, and facing them…

A blue iris. A red corona. A yellow crown.

_The mandala…_

She could feel herself freezing, tensing up in shock before going limb in wonder.

_Kara Thrace and her special destiny_…she'd thought it was just facing death, throwing herself into the abyss. But maybe that hadn't been the end of it. What was it that Sharon had said?

"Death becomes a learning experience…" she muttered, almost unaware she'd spoken out loud.

"Kara?" Est was watching her anxiously. "It's just an elevator…"

"What?" she startled. "I know, I just…wait." She stared at Est incredulously. "That's an elevator?" she demanded, gesturing at the engraved cylinder.

The customary grin came back. "Uh-huh. Straight out of the Chocolate Factory."

"…what?"

Est sighed. "Never mind. C'mon."

The forward Marine held his open hand in front of the mandala, and some kind of sensor must have been set off, because the centre of the thing lit up. Vivid light and colour spilt along the lines of ink and engraving; first in white, then blue, bleeding into red, and burning into yellow before firing white again as it filled the rest of the patterning. The double doors hissed back and they trooped inside. A holographic menu appeared when the doors slid shut again (oh, Gods, holograms, she couldn't remember the last time she'd seen one) and the same Marine selected a floor.

She was expecting it, but she still drew in a sharp breath when the elevator sank smoothly downwards. Est bumped Kara's shoulder with her own and gave her a comforting half-smile.

Floors passed in flashes of light and dark, shielded from sight by some trick of the glass. They slowed, stopped, and the entourage stepped into another courtyard similar to the first, though instead of a glass ceiling leading to the stars beyond there was a painted sky and yellow light to imitate high noon. They walked across the cobbles, through another set of glass doors and into a lobby like something out a museum.

Half-laughing with amazement – it didn't feel like they were in space, there was something so _planetside_ about it – she gasped out a soft, "Oh, wow…"

Est grinned. "I know, right? None of the marble's real, but it still looks –"

"Frakking amazing."

"Yup."

Kara tipped her head back and gazed around her as she walked. The room was walled with what looked like creamy marble to match the five pillars supporting its high ceiling, complete with an old-fashioned fresco depicting what she guessed to be the gods. Some of them anyway. She could see Hermes with his winged ankles and Aphrodite wearing her enchanted girdle. Ares was there with his bloodied sword and opposite him Saturn with a sickle and a sheath of wheat in hand. And there, there was Uranus with a cloak of sky and Neptune holding a trident. Jupiter stood centre-stage, kingly and grave-faced, and in his cupped hands…

The mandala again.

"Est," Kara said, "that pattern, the one that Jupiter's holding…"

"Its suppose to represent a Jovian storm. That's where most Carver's Gates crop up, y'know." She looked thoughtful. "Apparently stars look like that too, sometimes, just as they go supernova."

The Eye of Jupiter. Oh, Gods, what was happening here…?

The turned right in the lobby and through another set of double doors, down yet another corridor and finally into what appeared to be a conference room. at a glance she took in the long table with no less than twelve chairs and the view screen on the same wall as the door they'd just come in through.

What drew her eye was the window though. In spanned the opposite wall and looked down on Earth in all her glory.

There was a figure standing in front of it, gazing down at the planet.

She knew that silhouette, the span of those shoulders, the way they filled the dark wool coat. She knew the tilt of his head and the clasp of his hands behind his back. His face was only a blue in the curved plex window, but she knew him. _Knew_ him.

_He knows you better than you know yourself, Kara Thrace. He sees the truth about you. About your destiny..._

"Leoben."

* * *

**AN:** Holy frak, would you look at that cliffhanger. I'm gonna get lynched for sure. Reviews (even angry ones) are love!


	3. The Debrief

**AN:** Welcome to Chapter Three, in which there is, sadly, much exposition. Sorry guys, it had to be done. This is also hot of the press, so please forgive any mistakes (but do point them out if you choose to review so I can correct them, thanks)

* * *

**The Debrief**

_She knew that silhouette, the span of those shoulders, the way they filled the dark wool coat. She knew the tilt of his head and the clasp of his hands behind his back. His face was only a blue in the curved plex window, but she knew him. Knew him._

_He knows you better than you know yourself, Kara Thrace. He sees the truth about you. About your destiny..._

"_Leoben."_

He turned, his face very nearly in profile…

She could hear the blood rushing in her ears, a roar that chased her over light-years and leagues of stars. She was aware that she was shaking her head in pointless denial and trying to back away – straight into Est and the Marines stationed at the door.

"Kara –"

"He's a Cylon!"

Unbelievably, Est, who was gripping her left elbow and shoulder to keep her from backing up any further, rolled her eyes. It made her look like a teenager for a few brief seconds.

"No, you goob, he's a university professor."

Over the Terran officer's shoulder, Kara saw that he had turned to them fully and was watching them with evident concern.

Her mind expected to see Leoben's familiar face…but expectation had overcome reality and been overcome in turn; this was not the Cylon who had chased her across the universe, manipulated her on New Caprica and haunted her afterwards.

There were similarities – the cropped hair, general face shape, the capable hands and broad shoulders – but this man was older, mid-fifties, while Leoben's physical appearance had always struck her as being somewhere in his early forties, if that. She noted that his hair was full grey, the silver at his temples bright against the healthy tan. There were smile lines at the corners of his eyes, which, now that she looked, were the same deep brown as Est's. There was…kindness in his face, in his expression, where Leoben had only desire and intensity.

He cautiously made this way over to them, murmuring 'stand down, guys, stand down' to the Marines that had raised their weapons when she'd freaked out. He held his hands out, non-threatening, a placating gesture. She watched him like a bird watches a weaving snake; breathless and hypnotized. There was a moments of timelessness, watchfulness, and then he carefully took her right hand while Est still held her left.

It was like someone had handed her a low-level electric shock. She felt like some part of her that had been quiescent, dormant, until now was shaking itself away and swinging into motion.

She'd never met this man before in her life, but she'd known him for years.

"You're not Leoben," she breathed.

He smiled crookedly. It was like seeing the path that led to home.

"I never said I was," he murmured.

Now, like then, tears threatened.

"Who are you?"

His smile widened and Est said, "Kara Thrace, this is Doctor Jack O'Callahan," warmth filled her voice, "my dad."

Jack squeezed her hand. "Welcome to the _Pacific Star's_ University Chapter, Kara. We've been looking forward to meeting you for a long time."

---

Jack ushered the last of the Marines out of the door and sighed heavily to himself. Behind him, he sensed more than heard Kara shifting anxiously in her seat. He'd had the jarheads drag two over to the window before he bullied them out of the room and sent Esther to get her sister from the labs.

He scrubbed a hand over his hair, hopelessly mussing it, and turned back to the young woman gazing out at his planet. She sat in one of the leather upholstered conference chairs, once knee held up to her chest, face still and melancholic. She'd shed the top half of her flight suit and wore it tied at her waist. The short, bright hair and faraway look reminded him both of his wife and eldest daughter. Before Est had flown fighters and guard ships she had dreamed about it, watching the swallows darting and ducking from under the eaves of the family home…

"Not a bad view for a conference room, huh?" he asked, taking his own chair facing hers.

She glanced at him, and he saw her eyes tracking over him, mapping his features and undoubtedly reassuring herself that he wasn't 'Leoben'.

"Yeah," she murmured. "Only it doesn't seem to be changing."

He shook his head. "It won't. We're in geosynchronous orbit with the Earth. We'll always hover of the Pacific and this window will always look over Samoa, Tonga, Fiji…"

"Those are the names of the islands down there?"

"Hm-mm. The two larger ones down there, closer to the pole? That's New Zealand. Nearly a sixth of our personal up here are from down there. Good people…quirky though."

"Are you allowed to tell me this kind of thing…?"

He looked at her. "Why wouldn't I be?"

She shrugged, looking a little uncomfortable. "I'm…not exactly from around here. What if I'm not as friendly as I pretend to be?"

"If I didn't know better – which I do – I'd say you'd be in deep shit."

She raised one unimpressed eyebrow, looking so very much like Sage right then it nearly made him laugh. His wife had some of the most sardonic eyebrows he'd ever come across. Instead he wagged a finger at her, which at least got him a small smile.

"Don't go underestimating the people of Earth, Kara Thrace. It will only bring you pain and make you look silly."

She nodded, smile quirking at one corner. "I could say the same for my people."

"So could I."

She turned her gaze back to him from the view, eyes narrowing. "I'm really not the first to come through the Carver's Gates, am I? Est said something before we came in here; that two and half years ago other ships had come through…"

He nodded. It was as good a place to start as any. "She's right. If I remember correctly Scoreboards Seven and Twelve were the ones to pick them up and bring them back here. Three ships; the _Luna Deva_, a specialized cargo ship, the _Palanquin_ which was a private transport and its armed escort, the _Black Taur_. They'd been forced to flee a warship and had blind-jumped into the edges of a nebula and the mouth of Carver's Gate. The next thing they knew, they'd popped out dangerously close to this system's main asteroid belt. Luckily the Scoreboard's intercepted them and led them here.

"When we got them situated and into a debrief we learned that their people had been scattered by a cataclysmic attack…a nuclear strike on their worlds by a robotic race called Cylons."

Kara's head came up, staring at him. "You're frakking kidding me."

"I'm not," he told her solemnly. "The _Luna_, _Palanquin_ and the _Taur_ had barely managed to escape intact and had been part of a small fleet of civilian ships that banded together to look for others and military support. The only reason the _Palanquin_ was able to keep functioning after a hit from a Cylon fighter ship –"

"Raiders," Kara interjected. "We call them Raiders."

Jack nodded. "A hit from a Raider then. The only reason it was able to keep going was because of the support from the rest of the fleet. One of the passengers on the _Scylla_ was an aeronautical engineer, I believe."

He watched her breathing speed up, blue eyes wide. "Frak me," she whispered.

"Kara," he asked gently. "Is something the matter?"

"I know about the _Scylla_," she said. "I know what happened to it and the rest of that fleet but…how did those three know to run when the others didn't?"

"How did you know how to draw the Eye of Jupiter when you were four years old and had no idea what a star going supernova looked like?"

She frowned at him, puzzled and not happy about it. Jack could only smile at her.

"One of the passengers on the _Luna Deva _was escorting cargo from a colony called Saggitaron –"

Kara twitched

"– and up until a month after the attacks, she had been level-headed and a valuable member of staff. Then one day she appeared to flip out completely."

"What do you mean, 'flip out'?"

"She started crying in her sleep, seeing things that weren't there, muttered about 'the winged horse having teeth that tore at children'. Next thing anyone knew she had broken into the _Luna's_ bridge, held the pilot and captain at gun point and plotted a jump for the nebula's edge, sobbing her heart out about the winged horse the whole time. The _Luna_ was able to call for help and broadcast the random jump coordinates. It was the _Taur_ and the _Palanquin_ that answered, following them into the nebula…"

"And then down the mouth of the Gate," Kara finished. "Frak. _Frak_."

Jack sighed. "We know what happened to the _Scylla_ and the rest of that fleet as well. Four months ago two more ships emerged from another Gate, this time from being lost in a star cluster. The _Adriatic_ and the _Carina_ said they were part of another fleet guided and guarded by a warship – a Battlestar – called the _Galactica_."

Kara was gripping the fabric of her flight suit over her knees, her knuckles white. Jack quietly reached out and took one of them. She let him and he continued to speak.

"They'd been through a lot, including meeting up with another Battlestar called the _Pegasus_. Rumors had circulated on the civilian ships that the _Pegasus_ had once come across another civilian fleet and stripped it of everything it could, including personal, leaving them stranded and at the Cylon's mercy. We understand the _Pegasus_ lost its commander to a Cylon prisoner escaping and that the _Pegasus_ itself went down in a rescue operation. Is that right Kara?"

She nodded mutely, only slowly seeming to find her voice. "How – how did the woman, the cargo escort, know about the _Pegasus_? How did she know where to jump them to…?"

"She didn't," Jack said, "but there were those on the _Pegasus_ who knew what could happen if it came upon a civvie fleet."

She gave him an incredulous look, as though he were being obtuse. "Well, yeah, of course there would be. But _how_ –?"

Jack chuckled and shook his head, climbing to his feet. "Its complicated, Kara, and I can show you better than I can tell you. Come on." He helped her to her feet, and led the way from the conference room.

A short walk through the warren of wooden wainscoted hallways and corridors took them further into the University Chapter. A few students and apprentices paused to say hello, eyeing Kara curiously and no doubt wondering what a foreign flygirl was doing with their parapych professor. He found it funny, really; most of them had no idea he was ex-military himself and had been as hardcore a flight jock as his eldest daughter was now and his wife still was. That was a long time ago though…

"What is this place?" Kara asked as they reached their destination. They now stood in a small lobby with a reception desk and astronomy posters plastering the walls. A set of deep blue double doors faced them.

Jack grinned and swung one of them wide, ushering her into the cavernous, darkened room. "This is the university's planetarium."

He led her down through the amphitheatre of seats to the round deck at the bottom where a lecturer would usually stand and control the holodeck display. As a joke, one of the department TA's had fixed an old fashioned ship's wheel to the railing of the deck with 'command deck' carved into its wooden spokes. Jack started up the deck and overhead millions of stars seemed to bloom to life, lighting up the dark like a cloud of winking fireflies.

He glanced up at Kara as he began setting up the interaction parameters. She stood in the centre of the deck with her head tipped back, watching the stars arcing over them. The display turned, swinging through various systems as Jack searched for his target, and the light played gently over her face, the illusory rays of a hundred different yellow suns catching on her hair. He watched her face tighten then relax with surprise when he found the planet he was looking for.

"I know that – I know that planet. I know those ruins," she gasped. "That's Kobol!"

"It is." Jack slipped on the manip gloves and used them to beckon the hovering planet closer before setting it to turn slowly on its natural axis, showing each of the ruined settlements including its famous opera house.

"They don't look as old as when I saw them…these look recent." She narrowed her eyes, squinting at the rotating planet. "Is that a blast crater?"

"Yup."

She stared at him. "How the hell –?" Then cut herself off when she caught Jack's expression. "Complicated, huh?"

"Very."

She huffed, blowing scraps of blonde hair out of her face. "Fine. I'm listening."

He smiled and slipped into lecture mode almost without thinking about it.

"As you know, this is our peoples' original shared home world. From what we can gather, the Thirteenth Tribe, my tribe, split from the other Twelve after a civil war – hence the blast crater – and then left Kobol to seek out a new home four thousand years ago. These are the last images they took of their home planet.

"They journeyed across the stars and left various markers along the way, including…" He swung the display out again and found the relevant star cluster containing the mouth of a Carver's Gate. Their view took them through the cluster to a planet with great muddy oceans, valleys of dry scrub and… "The Temple of Five."

Kara was gazing at the planet with a set jaw. "I got shot down there," she muttered. "And before that we lost a good pilot to that frakking star cluster."

"No doubt the Thirteenth Tribe did as well. It's possibly why they built the Temple in the first place. It's also apparently where they prayed for guidance and were subsequently shown the route to Earth."

"To here," Kara murmured.

"Nope."

"What?"

Jack grinned at her expression of outright shock. "This is only a recent discovery," he told her, "and let me tell you, my face looked just like yours does now when I found out."

She stared at him, nonplussed. "What are you saying?" she demanded. "That this isn't Earth?"

"Oh, it is," he reassured her. "Just not the first one. Lemme explain."

With a flick of his wrist he swung the display again, and Earth – this Earth – came into view, spinning lazily.

"fifteen years ago, when my kids were still in grade school, something happened to this planet that we'd all been warned could happen…but that nobody was expecting for another hundred years."

He clenched one fist and mad a corkscrewing motion with it, tiny red LED's flickering along the knuckles of the manip glove. In response, faint red light bloomed across the Earth's face.

"See those," he said, pointing them out to Kara, "Those are Earth's fault lines, where her tectonic plates meet. Just here, in the Pacific region that's below us right now is a set of volcanoes called the Ring of Fire.

"In June of the year 2016, every single one of those volcanoes came to life again without warning."

Kara was horrified. "Oh, gods…"

Jack, face taunt, nodded in agreement. "It was just as devastating as you can imagine. But it wasn't the end. The simultaneous eruptions caused not only the earthquakes, tidal waves and landslides you'd expect; it birthed other volcanoes along the fault lines. The world over was affected. Millions died. We went from being one of the most abundant species on the planet to one of the most at risk, because even after all the seismic activity calmed down, we were still dying from starvation, disease and the injuries that the disasters had caused. Things only started to come right seven years ago. That's about when we found them."

He glanced at her. She looked back.

"Alright, I'll frakking bite. Found what?"

He grinned again and pulled the little glowing Earth toward them.

"Okay, well, these," he told her, gesturing to a certain famous mountain range in Tibet, "are the Himalayas. The whole range sprang up from two tectonic plates cracking heads, and, as you can imagine, when the Cataclysm happened, they shot up even further. What also happened was that one of the glaciers cracked open. You'll never guess what the rescue teams found there."

Kara rolled her eyes, but she was smiling a little too. "I'll never guess," she agreed. "What'd they find?"

"Lifeboats," he told her gleefully.

"…lifeboats?"

"Yup. _Space_ lifeboats. Five of them, and each one containing several accounts of how they had fled from their planet – Old Earth – to come here and quietly mingle with the existing population of less sophisticated humans."

Kara's hands flew up. "Whoa. Just…_whoa_. You're saying that there were _already_ humans here when these…refugees arrived? That's what you're saying, right?"

He nodded, feeling that thrill that he got whenever he thought about that particular fact. "It's fantastic, I know. But it's true; two populations of humans, developing independently of each other on two different planets in different systems, light years apart. One on Kobol, the other here, on New Terra. We've had to rethink our entire identity as a species and as a people. The chances of something like this happening are..."

"Frakking infinitesimally tiny," Kara muttered.

"Yeah," Jack said quietly. "Makes ya think a little harder on all those Intelligent Design theories huh?"

She hummed thoughtfully and nodded. "Hey, you said that the Thirteenth Tribe survivors were fleeing…what from?"

And here came one of the big bad punchlines. Jack took a breath and braced himself.

"Since the first Colonials showed up with their story, it hasn't just been Intelligent Design we've had to rethink. We've had to seriously reexamine history repeating itself.

"Two thousand years before it happened to the Twelve Colonies, it happened to the Thirteenth Tribe."

He could see the dread pooling in her features. "What did?" she whispered.

"The robotic working class rose up and rebelled. The lifeboats were fleeing annihilation at the hands of their own Cylons."

* * *

**AN2:** Dun dun dun! What is it with me and cliffhangers lately...?


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